


Down by the Water

by cat_77



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Barely There Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1210573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wade through the lies to try to find the truth.</p>
<p>[Spoilers for Agents of SHIELD episode "The Magical Place."]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down by the Water

* * *

  


She wore a sarong, the end of it dipped into the water and swirled in her wake. The water was so very, very blue save for where the red fabric danced along the tides.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

He looked to the small piece of wood he sat on that passed for a dock, the pale sand of a beach behind him, the cloudless sky above. He thought it was fairly obvious, really, which is why he was surprised when he heard himself say, "I don't know."

He closed his eyes to the blue, and awoke to the darkness.

  


* * *

  


She wore a sarong, the end of it dipped into the water and swirled in her wake. The water was so very, very blue save for where the red fabric danced along the tides.

The water was cold, frighteningly so. His feet dangled in it and they tingled with the chill, sent shivers up his calves that didn't quite reach the rest of him.

Her sarong almost touched him, she was so very, very close. He could reach out with his toes if he wanted to, feel the softness of the fabric.

He didn't move.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

He didn't have an answer, so he closed his eyes.

  


* * *

  


She wore a sarong, the end of it dipped into the water and swirled in her wake. The water was so very, very blue save for where the red fabric danced along the tides.

The sky was clear. It was always clear. The sand of the beach always like powder against his palms where it clung to the ancient wood.

The fabric danced in the water just like the waves danced across his skin, the chill still frighteningly sharp. He wondered if she felt it. She didn't seem to feel a thing.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"Why are you?" he countered, surprised to hear his own voice.

"Because you need me," she replied, and he figured that was fair enough.

  


* * *

  


She wore a sarong, the end of it dipped into the water and swirled in her wake. The water was so very, very blue save for where the red fabric danced along the tides.

"Why are you here?" he asked before she could. 

"Because you need me," she replied.

He didn't quite roll his eyes, but he suspected it was a near thing. "Why are you always here?" he tried instead.

"Because you always need me," she replied, as though it were that simple. She shrugged, red hair moving against pale shoulders in time with the red fabric against the waves. She didn't burn despite the cloudless sky but, then again, neither did he.

  


* * *

  


She wore a sarong, the end of it dipped into the water and swirled in her wake. The water was so very, very blue save for where the red fabric danced along the tides.

The water was deeper now, nearly to his knees. It was the first noticeable change he remembered. It was the first time he thought to look for any. It made him question just how long he had sat there, part in the freezing water, part in the warming sun, ass glued to a tiny piece of wood riddled with sand.

"How long have we been here?" he asked.

"I've only just arrived," she replied. It was a lie because it had to be.

"How long until we leave?" he tried instead.

She looked over her shoulder, and for the first time she looked less than serene. "Not long now, though you might not like where you're going," she told him, didn't expand to include such pesky things as meaning. "Close your eyes," she ordered.

He closed them.

  


* * *

  


She wore a sarong, the end of it dipped into the water and swirled in her wake. The water was so very, very blue save for where the red fabric danced along the tides.

"How do you stay dry when the water is so high?" he asked. He needed something to say, needed to fill the silence, and wanted a change from the usual. He questioned when it became usual.

His thighs were covered now, the give and pull of the waves a tickle against the tingle of his skin. His hands still rested on dry wood though, the sand soft beneath them.

"There is no water, Clint," she replied. It was the first time he had heard his name in days, minutes. He wondered why it was so important.

"Of course there is," he scoffed. He tried to splash her, tried to flip the water at her with his numb toes.

Nothing moved.

"Why are you here?" she asked because of course she did.

He didn't panic. He didn't do anything save for reply, "That's a damn good question, isn't it?"

She smiled, just a flit of a thing. "You're almost ready," she told him. 

He closed his eyes.

  


* * *

  


The sarong was gone, it's rich colors replaced by radiant black. She wore it from head to toe save for her hair and the clasp of her belt. The water was still so very, very blue, though the black seemed to melt to shadows within it.

He expected her to repeat their usual nonsensical conversations, was surprised he knew they had them before. Instead, she said, "He didn't want this for you. None of us did."

"Is it time to go?" he asked, and already knew the answer.

She raised one eyebrow, didn't move a single step closer. "Are you ready?" she asked.

The water was higher now, the sand wet beneath his fingertips, the cold extending to his shoulders. "I don't want to close my eyes," he admitted.

"This time, when you open them, you will be awake," she promised.

Her hand reached out, touched and clasped his own despite his inability to move. Pain wracked through his body, every nerve on fire, every muscle spasming in protest. 

He closed his eyes.

  


* * *

  


He awoke again not to the darkness he expected, but to a light bright and blinding and lacking the warmth of any sun. There were hands on him, sterile and protected, next to them were pinpoints of pain, the slide of needles and probes being removed, the agony of wounds left open before they were coated with a softness that was in no way familiar.

He might of screamed, he honestly wasn't certain. He knew only that he fell silent when warm hands cupped his face, a shadow blocked the blinding light.

"You're okay; you are going to be okay," a voice said. 

It wasn't Natasha. She was gone. He might have asked for her because he heard another voice say, "Thank fuck, it worked. Get her back in here!"

The first voice ignored them though. Rough thumbs bare from latex or its equivalent stroked across his face, were sandpaper against his skin. "I never wanted this for you," the voice promised. "No one should have to go through this. Ever."

There was the sound of footfalls, light and soft and barely heard above the gasps of his own breathing. A new shadow fell, limned with red as the light filtered through familiar curls. "You're okay, Clint. We have you now," Natasha promised.

"Incoming!" a voice he should recognize called. There was chaos, planning, movement on all parts save for his own.

The red disappeared, the sound of gunfire and threats replacing it.

"Can he walk?" a new voice asked. It sounded unsure, frightened. It reassured him with its realness. He couldn't see who it was. He knew already.

"He was paralyzed and thought dead, the fact that he's breathing is a fucking miracle," the warning voice chimed in.

Yet another voice, and he'd be dizzy with the need to track them all if they didn't serve to comfort him, said, "It is no matter, I will carry him."

Hands, impossibly strong hands, lifted him, shifted him, let his pain twist and settle and twist again. The light was gone and he could finally see. There was Thor, holding him as though he were weightless in a manner he'd be embarrassed about if he could think beyond relief, exhaustion, and fear. To his left was Steve, shield in hand though uniform nowhere to be found. Just behind the All American Hero or whatever he was without the costume, was Bruce, files both paper and electronic in hand. Tony was before them, a tablet of his own and the suitcase suit brandished as weapons. Natasha was at the forefront, gauntlets armed and guns in hand and woe to be whoever stood in he way.

It was the person to his right that made the least amount of sense. The man that still held him, still touched some part of him, even though he was surrounded by protectors, even though the man himself was armed and aiming. Even though the man himself shouldn't be there. Shouldn't exist at all.

"I thought you were dead," Clint managed. His voice sounded like he had used all of that freezing water to swallow all of that soft sand.

"The same could be said for you," Stark retorted.

But the man to his side, the man he knew so well, simply gripped him tighter. "They didn't know, so they couldn't rebuild the memories," the man said, as though his words made sense. He shook his head, pissed and sorrowful and possibly homicidal. "They couldn't rebuild them for either one of us."

"His team helped us," Steve admitted. Then, after a pause, "His new team."

"Yeah, his not-us team that's now totally going to be a part-of-us team and one big happy family and can we get the hell out of here?" Tony asked.

"Working on it," yet another new voice said. He only partially recognized it, figured it was the not-us part, especially when the man at his side started calling out orders and it and several others called back in the affirmative.

He tried to turn his head to look up at Thor, gave it up as a lost cause. His teammate understood though, shifted his grip slightly so that he could look outward, see with his own eyes. "Dreaming? Because I'd kinda like to go back to the water, it hurt less."

And Phil, the man he knew so well, tightened his grip just for a second before he released it, before he lay a gentle hand on Clint's aching head and pressed lips beside it. "Not dreaming, not anymore. This one's real," he promised.

And he'd appreciate that, really he would, but there was a commotion ahead, the sound of boots and safeties being flipped and then the sound of a phalanx of agents parting. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" Fury asked. He knew that voice, knew it anywhere.

"Bringing him home," Natasha replied. It was a promise. It was a threat.

He heard the huff of breath that signaled the Director's annoyance. "He was-"

"He was dead," Coulson finished for him. "At least according to you. I'm beginning to believe you have a loose and fleeting definition of that word."

"We saved him!" Fury retorted. Boots echoed in the emptiness as he approached, a flip of black leather edging ever closer.

"You made him question his very reality. You made him doubt his own vision." And there, that was the crux of it, that was the worst of it all, the thing he couldn't put into words but could count on someone else, someone who knew him far too well, to understand. His sight, his aim, these were everything to him, made him who he was, made him who he could be. Now they melded with the lies around him, muddled the truth just as reality itself was blurred.

"We were going to tell him. We were going to explain everything," Fury promised. There it was, the placating tone that signaled the untruth he wished everyone else to believe through sheer force of will.

"When?" a voice asked. Young. Female. New. "Because you did a truly stellar job with AC here." Not-us. Soon-to-be-us by the sound of it. If they had let Coulson choose his own team, they were probably already there.

There was silence. Far too long of a pause before Fury said, "In time..."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Stark said. He moved to step forward, and the agents moved to stop him.

To his side, Bruce very carefully, very casually, removed his glasses and set them atop his files. He handed them to an impossibly young woman with a stack of tablets and cords of her own. "If you could be so kind as to hold these?" he asked without truly asking.

"Of course, Dr. Banner," she replied, accent thick and from somewhere in the British Isles.

Fury held up a hand. The agents held up their guns. "Now, Dr. Banner, don't do anything you'll regret," he said.

Bruce chuckled, deep and echoing, the strain of the fabric of his shirt serving as counterpoint to the sound. "I don't plan on regretting anything," he replied easily. He gestured to the hallway they gathered in, to the door that lay beyond it, to the promise of freedom and unconsciousness of a non-pre-scripted format. "We are leaving. We are taking our teammate with us. You are letting us go."

A small man beside the Brit asked in an equally non-American accent, or at least as much as he could manage in a stage whisper of a voice, "Is anyone else aware that he is turning a distinct shade of green?"

"Yes, Fitz, I do believe that is the point of this exercise," she replied, and Clint could see what Phil liked in her.

They left. Threats and counter-threats abounded, but they left and they did so unharmed.

His lungs felt the chill of fresh air. He closed his eyes.

  


* * *

  


She wore a sarong, the end of it dipped into the water and swirled in her wake. The water was so very, very blue save for where the red fabric danced along the tides.

The sky was clear. It was always clear. The sand of the beach always like powder against his palms where it clung to the ancient wood.

She waded away but there was a presence against his side, a man in a perfectly pleated suit rolled neatly to keep the fabric dry if not spotless. The fabric scratched against his skin. Familiar. Different.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"Because you need me," came the reply.

They sat, side by side, the warm water lapping at their toes, nothing but clear skies and blue water around them. In the background, far, far, away, he knew there were others. They worked, they strived, they fought, they survived. 

They made certain that they were not the only ones.

  


* * *


End file.
